My OperaHow to uninstall Windows Search KB940157
Saturday, January 24, 2009 2:00:24 PM
You have installed Windows Search, then you run CCleaner. Unfortunately CCLeaner considers Windows Search as an "hotfix" (those patches from Windows Update) and then removes the uninstaller. After that you can't remove Windows Search any more. You have downloaded the "stand alone" installer "WindowsSearch-KB940157-XP-x86-enu.exe" from Microsoft to install it again and then uninstall but you see installing it does not re-create the entry in "control panel - installed apps" either the "$NtUninstallKB940157$" subdir in "Windows".
Solution:
1. manually create a restore point (just in case)
2. delete these keys from the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\Windows XP\SP3\KB940157
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\KB940157
3. reinstall the standalone "exe".
4. now you can see the "$NtUninstallKB940157$" directory. Open this dir and look for a dir named "spuninst". Within the spuninst dir you should find a file named "spuninst.exe". Running this file should manually uninstall Windows Search.
Versione italiana qui: http://eldalie.blogspot.com/2009/01/come-disinstallare-windows-search.html
Solution:
1. manually create a restore point (just in case)
2. delete these keys from the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Updates\Windows XP\SP3\KB940157
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\KB940157
3. reinstall the standalone "exe".
4. now you can see the "$NtUninstallKB940157$" directory. Open this dir and look for a dir named "spuninst". Within the spuninst dir you should find a file named "spuninst.exe". Running this file should manually uninstall Windows Search.
Versione italiana qui: http://eldalie.blogspot.com/2009/01/come-disinstallare-windows-search.html
Shaunak DeShaunak # Sunday, January 25, 2009 9:28:37 AM
Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Sunday, January 25, 2009 9:38:45 AM
On a side note: I still remember old good times when utilities like "Volkov Commander" (a file manager for Dos) were written in Assembler and took maybe 10KB of the first 640KB of memory.
Aux # Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:58:39 AM
Shaunak DeShaunak # Monday, January 26, 2009 3:52:12 AM
Speaking of Assembler....
I tried a little experiment.
I wrote a simple program, to display a triangular pattern and compiled it with Turbo CPP and MS visual C++.
Turbo C++ returned a 24.5 KB application. The same thing in VC++ returned nearly a Several Hundred KB monster...(I dont remember the exact figure)
I preserved the TurboCPP exe though: http://rapidshare.com/files/189496067/TEST.EXE.html
My question is, are we moving a step forward and two steps back?
Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Monday, January 26, 2009 8:45:03 AM
I guess the same goes for the software design phase (when you set the specs, requirements and goals) and the testing/quality assurance (when you verify how the software performs).
I mean, I was speaking with a girl who bought a new laptop and complained it was so slow she could barely work on it. She told me the PC had 2 GB of RAM. I checked and the girl did not have anything wrong on the PC, besides Vista, some MS tools like Windows Defender and a bunch of "utilities" like those "Norton Total Termo Nuclear Fotonic Protection" running in background. Once removed the useless tools and verified the Windows services, the computer worked much better, more or less like my laptop with WinXP and 512 GiB of RAM (that is 1/4) and a much older CPU.
Yes, we are moving backwards, technically speaking. But it is all about marketing and selling stuff, not about technicalities. The whole IT business is about selling "new" crap every day. In the field of home appliances like the washer, they just make the washer so it breaks after some amount of cycles, then people must buy a new one every "x" years. Since software does not break, they need to find a way to force people to buy new stuff and usually it is done by promising "new" fantastic features, which are then made with worse coding that requires "new" hardware and so on.
Aux # Monday, January 26, 2009 9:33:27 AM
First of all C language is not optimized for small executables, compiler can not detect what code to include into binary and what to skip, because it just compiles file by file and leaves all the dirty work to linker, which is not meant to detect application logic. So if you include io library and use only one function from it it does not matter - resulting binary will have all the code from library. For example, back in the days Borland Pascal was great because it had heuristics and removed unneeded code. Pascal is well-suited for such optimizations, C is not. OOP broke this feature in Delphi by the way.
Next is that nowadays compiler creators think that you always create compilcated software, so they include a lot of unneeded infrastructure like exception handling, memory managers etc. So even if you make Hello World you actually end up with a monster. Programming is not fun any more ):
Another issue is GUI frameworks. VCL, MFC and so on. Actually all of them is garbage, because current GUI APIs are lame and very unfriendly. So if you do not want to spend a few weeks in bloody warfare with WinAPI GDI or naked X you use MFC, Qt and so on rendering your small application into a big monster.
Actually I can continue this list, but who cares? Programmers have a lot of legacy nowadays. We need to drop C and, especially C++, we need to rewrite from scratch OS APIs and we need to teach programmers from start to adapt new and better technologies. But who will do it? Everyone know that X infrastructure sux for at least ten years now and what did open source geniuses made? Instead of dropping X they upgraded it to composite X. Whatta hell? And theese guys do not have any strings attached like Microsoft employees... Yet Microsoft guys work on Singularity with new technologies in mind - no C, no WinAPI, less stupidity. It is sad that Singularity is not Microsoft's target and they are busy with Windows...
Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Monday, January 26, 2009 9:41:08 AM
Aux # Monday, January 26, 2009 9:48:23 AM
Lorenzo CelsiLorenzoCelsi # Monday, January 26, 2009 9:59:57 AM
In my opinion the current situation depends on three factors:
1. Microsoft believing they did not have any competitor on the desktop. Same as IE for the browsers.
2. Microsoft believing their customers use the PC as a multimedia station where they just plug any sort of device, not caring of the technicalites of it and not minding of buy new hardware together with new software. This is very american IMHO.
3. Microsoft being focused in building a major stronghold in the server and development area, especially related to the corporate market (done via .net and related technologies opposed for example to Java).
I guess the only way to break backwards compatibility is to split their line of products in two or more. More or less like when they had NT4 and Win9x on the market.
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